Joel Hemphill was a presenter/speaker at this year’s 19th Annual Theological Conference held in Atlanta, GA 4/25-4/28.  Joel did a terrific presentation on the need for “Removing Greek Philosophy From Christianity“.  If you’d like to view a video of it recorded there at the conference, you can watch it for free at Dan Gill’s wonderful 21st Century Reformation website: http://21stcr.org/multimedia/removing_greek_philosophy/removing_greek_philosophy.html.  On that same page you’ll find a down-loadable PDF version of another one of Joel’s tracts - this one about some “Shocking Admissions” from various Trinitarian scholars. I like it so much, I thought I’d publish it here in the KR blog.  I hope you enjoy as well.

Shocking Admissions

“Facing The Truth Regarding
The Doctrine of The Trinity”

  by Joel Hemphill

Dear Friend:

I’ve been wanting to do this post for a couple of weeks now, but somehow could never find the time to get it totally finished until today.  I hope my fellow posters here on KR won’t mind if I go out of turn.  Just think of this as my long lost “Saturday” post.

Here’s another old conditional immortality pamphlet from my father’s collection that I’m bringing into the digital age.  I searched the internet for this particular piece and never found it.  Although I did find out that the author (Horace Lorenzo Hastings) lived back in the 1800’s (1831-1899).  This little track was published by Adventist churches for decades after - my particular copy by Advent Christian Publications & then hand stamped from the Advent Christian Church of Shamrock, Texas (probably in the early 1970’s).  Enjoy!

1. Who is immortal?
“The King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God.” 1 Tim. 1:17.

2. Are not all men possessed of immortality?
“The blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords; who only hath immortality.” 1 Tim. 6:15, 16.

History and Development

Jesus claimed to be the Son of God and not God the Son. His belief about God reflected the central tenet of Jewish faith, that God is One.

In many people’s minds, the idea that Christmas evolved from Pagan feasts is given more credence by the fact that many Christmas customs were observed as part of Pagan religion and culture. Yule logs, holly, mistletoe, and evergreen decorations all play a part in many different Pagan festivals. But does that mean that they all stem from the same source? Lights and trees, revelry and gift-giving are common to many different celebrations in many different cultures. But this doesn’t prove that they are derived from the same source. If Christians use them at Christmas, why assume they were all taken from Paganism?

This is a condensed excerpt from a new article on my web site.  Every year when the Holidays roll around we get the usual circulated messages about Christmas. One sector of Christendom cries, “Let’s put Christ back in Christmas” and “Jesus is the reason for the season!” Meanwhile another sector says we can’t put Christ back in Christmas because he was never there to begin with. They claim that Christmas is a Pagan feast and any Christian who observes it is committing idolatry. Obviously both sides can’t be right. Is it Pagan? Is it Christian? Is it both? Is it neither? This article is an attempt to sort it out.

Some have downplayed the significance of the Kingdom because it isn’t mentioned by name as much in the rest of the New Testament, outside of the Synoptic Gospels. But it is mentioned in certain significant passages and tied in with other concepts, using other terminology. The epistles are addressed to people who have already accepted the Gospel of the Kingdom, and now see it from the point of view of “heirs” - a word mentioned quite frequently in the epistles. The promise that Abraham and his seed should be “the heir of the world” (not of “heaven”) is referred to in Romans 4:13-14. And Christians are called heirs in Romans 8:17; Galatians 3:29; 4:1,7; Titus 3:7; Hebrews 1:14; James 2:5; I Peter 3:7.

Since the Reformation, it has been taught more and more among Protestants that Jesus declared the Kingdom to have arrived, but that he taught his disciples the “true” understanding of the Kingdom, namely that of God’s reign in one’s heart.  In addition, another common misunderstanding that leads to the belief that the Kingdom must have been redefined is the question of when Jesus expected it to take place. If Jesus had indeed meant a political kingdom that would overthrow Israel’s oppressors, he would seem to have been wrong about it being “at hand.” Much is made of Jesus’ supposed belief that his return would be in the lifetime of his disciples, but he told them he did not know when he was going to return (Matthew 24:36; Mark 13:32).

Jesus proclaimed that the Kingdom of God was near, but that there would be an interim period before it was fully inaugurated. The Kingdom, to him, was primarily the eschatological (end-times) reign and judgment of Messiah on earth. It is in this sense that it would fulfill the promises to Abraham and David, and the many prophecies of the Day of the Lord and the coming of the Son of Man.

The following excerpt is from the online Jewish Encyclopedia regarding the Jewish and Christian perspective on the “Kingdom of God.” The article begins by giving a short overview of the development of the Jewish understanding of thiws concept followed by some commentary on the transistion of the idea into Christianity. Here is some of the except which I thought was interesting:

It is the approach of this Kingdom of Heaven, in opposition to the Kingdom of Rome, which John the Baptist announced (Matt. iii. 2; comp. Luke i. 71-74, iii. 17). Jesus preached the same Kingdom of God (Matthew has preserved in “Kingdom of Heaven” the rabbinical expression “Malkut Shamayim”), and when he said, “the kingdom of God cometh not by observation [that is, calculation] . . . for, behold, the kingdom of God is among [not within] you” (Luke xvii. 21, Syriac version), he meant, “It does not come through rebellion or by force” (see Jew. Encyc. iv. 51, s.v. Christianity).